When It Rains, It Poors

I was in Fullerton, walking through the bar-hopping hot-spot as Reggae, House, Latino, and Top-40 pumped from the respective dive-bars. I shook hands with a former employee and discussed how life was. His Boston accent, brute manner, and Italian style hadn't changed. I noticed a woman sitting on a bench by herself. She wore a rasta-style hat, beatnik sunglasses, and a crazy amalgamation of army issue clothing. She held a huge tub of ice cream in her hands. I walked up and asked what kind of ice cream she was eating. She paused for nearly 15 seconds, looked at the label, slowly cocked her head up at me and slurred "I dunno...but it's good!" I smiled and wondered if I should offer her some cash. Before I could get any further in thought she looked up at me again and mumbled, "Hey...do you have any acid connections?" I furrowed my brow and asked her to repeat the question. "Can you get any acid?" I laughed a little until I realized she was serious. "No...sorry," I said, and walked away.
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"That fag!" This was said with such animosity that the four of us in the cheese prep area actually stopped what we were doing and looked at him. He was talking about a table that totally screwed him on tip even after saying everything was great. We don't really know each other, so nobody is sure if he is homophobic, insecure, or just using a common term that some people are offended by. "You shouldn't use that word," one of the girls nearby said. A huge conversation started about what is appropriate usage of "controversial" terms. Nobody would listen to my philosophical take on intention and how one can use a derogatory term if it is often aimed at their own race/sex/sexuality/etc. Instead it broke down into an emotional tirade about how she has lots of homosexual family members and how we need to be sensitive to what people find offensive. I was very tempted to start using derogatory terms about Puerto Ricans and then explain that I'm 25% Puerto Rican. That would probably cause more of a stir than I want to deal with at a new job.
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A drug dealer listens in on a conversation about youthful mistakes in the area of thievery. "I hated my job," his buddy says, "so I stole hundreds of dollars worth of tires for my friends." The drug dealer responds with, "Yeah, well that doesn't justify it. That's horrible." I laugh as he texts some friend with when he'll be by to sell them some yay.
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"Well, I don't know...is that acceptable?" I'm listening in to a conversation from my hiding spot at a corner desk. Nobody pays attention to me. "We're talking about the context of marriage here, right?" This is coming from the badly dressed (ok, so they're all badly dressed) guy eating a Cup O' Noodles. "Yeah," comes the response, "oral sex is still wrong." The guy with the shaved head speaks up, "Totally, the point of sex is procreation, and oral sex is aimed purely at the physical." The first guy pitches in, "Unless, maybe...maybe if you don't finish during the act. If you use it as part of the procreation thing but you don't finish with it you aren't using it for purely physical reasons." Seriously. I can't believe I'm hearing this.
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Oh yeah, Miss Teen South Carolina is ridiculously dense, renegade citizens are using YouTube to destroy bad cops, Splenda is poisoning people with Sucralose, Jaguan Kim is converting people to an incoherent physicalist view of the mind/body problem, and Bob Barker is failing miserably at controlling the pet population.

Sigh...the world is a complicated place.

A total eclipse of the suuuuun, er...mooooon!

So you might have heard of the 'double moon' rumor, or the 'mars will be as big as the moon' rumor, or the 'Grant is actually a ninja' rumor, but they're all false. Except maybe the third one. People have been going off about Mars coming so close to the moon that it will be just as large and this only happens once every couple thousands years or so. As far as I can tell with extensive (read: 2 minutes worth) research (read: Google), Mars might be close, but that's not what is in the nights sky tonight. Or so the internets tell me. And the internet is always right. Always.

NASA is saying that what you might have seen is just a total lunar eclipse...which is still pretty dang cool. If we were Mayans a couple thousand years ago we might be sacrificing women and children so the moon gods bring the light back to us. I like to follow tradition, so if you don't hear from me for a few years, I'm hiding out in South America under the alias 'Queso.'

Anyway, here's a horribly unsteady shot of the very beautiful lunar eclipse. I apologize for my tripod-less shot and hopefully you got to see it for yourself.


In other news...a person's head is not a suitable substitute for a tripod. Trust me.

Oh my gosh. I just found this picture in my media folder. I think it's thanks to Christina that I have it. Seriously...how did people at Chapman not think I was doing drugs?

Quote of the Day

You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.

- Albert Einstein

For those of you who didn't know, I didn't exactly like my old job. A laundry list of complaints including, but not exhausted by, such issues as:

-not enough glasses for the restaurant
-not enough silverware for the restaurant
-not enough napkins for the restaurant
-constant shortage of common foods
-ridiculous tips from uncultured (or obstinate) customers
-passive aggressive punishment if one even thinks about a) vacation time, b) time off for medical procedures, c) leaving the restaurant, d) breaking any one of a myriad of unspoken rules one is simply expected to know

So I took the only course of action I could think of to remedy this: quit and join a corporate giant. Huzzah!

I'm now at an upscale fondue place (*leaving out name due to stories of people being fired from corporate jobs as a result of blogging about said jobs) and I'm, to use some 90's slang, stoked.

So...if you're in Brea and have a few hundred dollars to blow between you and your friends, forget rent and utilities, eat some fondue at my restaurant!

Oh, and there are possible job horror stories to come (as a replacement for any blog topic of any real substance). Enjoy!


p.s. Did some layout changes to get my archives back. Looks like I lost all my comments again unless I can figure out a way to get them back. We'll see.